Feb 18, 2005

A Rant About the Media

by Cliopatria

Hey: I predicted it, and tonight they went out and did it: The Rumsfeld quotation that I mentioned from his Pentagon hearings Wednesday was the Daily Show's"Moment of Zen" tonight. First Peter King, now John Stewart. Stop stealing my material, famous people!

Meanwhile, is anyone else finding a bit of pleasure in watching journalists complain about how bloggers who are nailing them lack credentials and qualifications in the wake of the discovery of the White House's succession of paid hatchetmen and porn purveyors? This is a profession whose practitioners write books about anything they please irrespective of whether it is at all related to their day job, people who write columns about whatever tickles their fancy, and then love to mock academics if we ask about their credentials. Keep this in mind the next time Halberstam or McCullough are stumping their books. Qualifications either matter or they don't, folks. I do not recall a backlash against Mitch Albom, a sportswriter in Detroit, when he wrote that vat of treacle Tuesdays With Morrie. I am more than willing to judge the quality of the work irrespective of credentials. I've been known to stray into territory not exactly within the ambit of my pretty broad training. But these blowhards are amusing. They want it both ways.

I am also a bit tired of journalists and their potted exposes of the historical profession. If you've read a daily newspaper of late, you've seen at least one story covering the tired terrain of the sins (alleged and real) of Goodwin, Ambrose, Bellesiles and Ellis as if it was fresh news. Journalists, who commonly resort to"high level officials" and other unnamed sources, and whose profession hit its peak of glamor in the light of Woodward and Bernstein's shoddy work during the Nixon years (why do so few people know this?), probably ought not to be worrying about footnotes in our profession. I agree that historians need to do a better job policing ourselves and that we are fair game for anyone. I am just not certain that the loudest criticism ought to come from some hack who does not ever have to footnote or cite accurately, who thinks The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a career aspiration, who has been trained that one sentence does a paragraph make, whose editor might have rewritten half of their last article on the local city council meeting, and whose own profession is reaching new levels of laughability.

Now I'm going to settle down for a giggle with David Halberstam's The Children, which asserts that the first arrest on the Freedom Rides came in Charlottesville (The Freedom Riders never went through Charlottesville; the first arrest was in Charlotte -- a slight difference) and tells a colorful tale about Diane Nash traveling over night to meet Martin Luther King, Jr. and have a chicken dinner. Rollicking stuff. Except that event never happened either. Nash has to this day never been to the King house. Sorry -- some jackass was braying about credentials?

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Derek Charles Catsam - 2/18/2005

Rob --
Great question. That certainly plays a role. What is interesting to me, though, is that more thasn anything the nonsense about credentials seems to get to a larger issue -- it is an attempt to deflect what seem to me to be legitimate criticisms. Forgive me for chuckling when it is discovered that an administration (that vocally opposes gay marriage, by the way, and that was up in arms over the rather fiasco) has hired some hack to plant softball questions and it is discovered, and then it is discovered that the guy was hiding his identity, and then it is discovered that he runs a porn site.
Beyond that is the fact that many, many, many of the very bloggers who break stories like this do have backgrounds in "old media." many still do. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic and writes coumns for magazines in the US and the Times of London. So basically, in addition to being an illegitimate criticism, it is factually untrue to say that some of these folks do not have credentials.

dc

Robert Wisler - 2/18/2005

Does this possibly go back to the Old Media vs. New Media? Do you think the journalists you are speaking of lash out at the pundits because they feel threatened by their "new media"?

Rob

Derek Charles Catsam - 2/18/2005

Maarja --
One point related to each of yiour comments: I agree about the book buying public. This is why I maintain that I am more than willing to take work on its own terms. All histrians use works of history written by "non-historians." Very few hide behind the wall of whather someone has a PhD. But the courtesy does not have to run both ways. As soon as called, journalists more often than not do not try simply to argue the case on the merits -- they love depicting historians in a particlualrl;y delegitimizing way, as if the letters PhD are what we stand behind and not the process that it took to get that PhD.
As for your second point, most all of the journmalists I know are scrupulous too. This does not change the assertions that I make -- I'll bet you a subscription to the newspaper of your choice that today's Washington Post has a front page story in which "high level officials" or its equivalent appears. That is sourcing?I am not backing bloggers fully either -- all I am saying is that the flurry of recrimintaions against bloggers for not being "real journalists" is rather interesting coming from people who often do things for which they are no more credentialed than those they attack.
As i saty -- I am willing to take work on its merits. I just find this an especially juicy case of hypocrisy.

dc

Maarja Krusten - 2/18/2005

Derek, I re-read your post and was struck by the fact that you wrote of reporters: "I am just not certain that the loudest criticism ought to come from some hack who does not ever have to footnote or cite accurately, who thinks The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a career aspiration, who has been trained that one sentence does a paragraph make, whose editor might have rewritten half of their last article on the local city council meeting, and whose own profession is reaching new levels of laughability."

The few journalists I have dealt with have been good about sourcing and fact checking. For example, a common rule of thumb is that you do not print as fact something which is not sourced to two separate, credible sources. If you look at the libel cases which have involved the press, it is obvious why that is a good idea. (Granted, the courts have held that public figures have more limited protection under libel law than do ordinary, private citizens. And quoted opinions obviously differ from fact.)

What about bloggers' standards of accuracy? If you go back to some of the sensational stories coming out of the Clinton administration, publishers and reporters sometimes held back because they were unable to verify stories. A Matt Drudge worked to a different standard.
Of course, there have been notable problems, such as the Janet Cooke fiasco at the Washington Post during the 1980s and the recednt Jason Blair scandal at the NYT. (I recently read _Hard News_ which gives an interesting account of the latter. Arthur Gelb's memoir, _City Room_, provides an even more in-depth look of the dynamics surrounding reporters and their editors. I know you teach and are very busy -- who of us ever has enough time to read? -- but I do recommend Gelb's memoir.)

For what it is worth, the reporter with whom I most closely worked on a story years ago seemed to seek verification of facts and his publisher was meticulous about fact checking. At any rate, the part of the story that involved me received careful fact checking.

Maarja Krusten - 2/18/2005

Derek, where do you see the general public -- bloggers exluded -- fitting in here? Whether in "popular history" books or in journalism, don't we essentially get what the public _at large_ is willing to settle for? In my view, that standard has been trending downwards. The sale of books and newspapers depends on the marketplace and publishers naturally have their eye on the bottom line.

I recently sent a letter to the Washington Post, noting that an article on the "Disneyfication" of the Lincoln Museum warranted 3,000 words in the Style section, while serious archival and historical issues largely were ignored by the press. The Post's article referred in passing to the increasing "historical illiteracy" of Americans. But it unwittingly added to that, in my view. Lincoln holograms, WOW!!! Sources and footnotes, shrug. The last time the WP covered the OAH convention, the article was in the Style section, not in the section reserved for hard news.

A colleague of mine who has been in contact with the newspaper tells me that he was told they look for stories of interest to the general public. Well, I guess that makes sense, they look for what sells, but the general public doesn't show much interest in footnotes or credentials or the distinctions between history based on anecdotes as opposed to history based on contemporaneous documentation. What can we, as historians, do to educate them better? I send in the odd letter to the editor to newspapers from time to time. What else do you think historians can do to raise standards - or do you think it is hopeless? I gotta look at the tape of that Daily Show, BTW, thanks for the tip.